This curriculum works well for classrooms and groups and is suited for special education and regular education students. Start by determining your students' social language needs with the Social Language Checklist. Then, choose lessons that will meet those needs. Copy the student activity sheets or print them from the FREE CD.

Specific goals and skills are addressed within the 31 Social Skills Lessons, each with:

Preparation suggestions—High-interest activities get students excited to learn the target skills.

Social skills story—Read-aloud stories depict common social situations, many of which take place in the classroom.

Social skills pictures—Pictures correspond to the social skills story in the Instructor's Manual and extend the discussion and application to new contexts.

Discussion questions—Twelve to twenty discussion questions for each lesson stimulate students to reason, take others' perspective, give opinions, determine what is important, and more

Activity sheets—Interactive exercises springboard to discussion and practice. Use role-playing, drawing, writing, flash cards, self-checklists, and more. The last activity in each lesson prompts students to decide on times and places to practice the skills they have learned.

Game sheets—Each unit has a game for skills review.

The units are:

Making and Keeping Friends Making introductions; starting and ending a conversation; sharing and offering your help; saying you're sorry; giving and accepting compliments

Fitting In at School Being a good listener; asking for help; saying thank you; asking questions; participating in discussions; finishing your work

Handling Your Feelings Knowing how you feel; saying how you feel; rewarding yourself

Using Self-Control When you need to cool off; teasing; when you need permission; when you're wrong; and when you're not wrong

Being Responsible When things aren't fair; when you're left out; being a good sport; accepting "no" for answer; handling disagreements

Positive peer relationships are important for both language development and social development of school-age children. Reciprocal relationships between language skill and social acceptability among peers have been noted in the literature (Gallagher, 1993).

Specific social skills/behaviors must be taught and practiced in order for some students to grasp and exhibit them fluently in appropriate contexts (Lane, Menzies, Barton-Arwood, Doukas, & Munton, 2005).

This best-selling series systematically targets the critical aspects of social language development to help your students with autism spectrum disorders and language/learning disabilities fit in socially.

Author(s)

Carolyn C. Wilson

Biography

Carolyn C. Wilson, M.S., CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist in private practice in Fort Worth, Texas. She specializes in providing evaluations and intervention for children and adolescents who experience learning or social language problems related to language disorders. She has authored or co-authored a number of clinical books in these areas. Carolyn began her career in 1975 as a public school speech-language clinician and later served as instructor and clinical coordinator in speech-language pathology at Texas Christian University.

Introduction

Room 14 is a practical resource for building social language. Room 14 will teach your students skills that reinforce social growth, personal happiness, and academic success.

Overview Room 14 has an Instructor's Manual, an Activities Book, and a Picture Book. The Instructor's Manual contains a Social Skills Checklist, Social Skills Lessons, and an Appendix on relaxation techniques important for self-control. The Activities Book contains activity sheets to extend each lesson, a game sheet for each unit, and an answer key. The Picture Book contains pictures with questions that relate to each lesson.

The lessons are divided into five units focusing on successful language use in these important social areas:

Unit 1: Making and Keeping Friends

Unit 2: Fitting In at School

Unit 3: Handling Your Feelings

Unit 4: Using Self-Control

Unit 5: Being Responsible

Selecting Students Room 14 is designed for both special and regular education students. It can be used for remediation or prevention of social language problems.

Remediation: Social language instruction is an important part of educating students who interact inappropriately.

Prevention: Classrooms are effective places for social language instruction. All students benefit from learning social language skills and using them in their daily lives.

Whether used for remediation or prevention, the flexibility of Room 14 makes it especially applicable to collaboration among various professionals whose goal is to help their students build social language skills.

Teaching the LessonsStudents learn social skills through a combination of approaches. That's why Room 14 lessons offer a variety of teaching procedures. The lessons involve your students in important language activities, like speaking, listening, and using and understanding body language. In addition, they'll learn how to approach and respond to others.

Here's one approach for how to teach the social skills in Room 14:

Discuss and model the skills.

Let your students practice.

Give helpful feedback.

Reward the emerging skills.

There are various ways to use the lessons in Room 14, but here's a suggested way to use the components with the above approach.

Start with the Instructor's Manual and the Picture Book

First, determine your students' social language needs with the Social Language Checklist found at the front of the Instructor's Manual. Then, choose lessons that will meet your students' needs.

Kick off your lesson with the high-interest activity found in the Preparation part of the lesson. Then, read aloud the Social Skills Story in the Instructor's Manual. Your students will identify with the Room 14 characters who have social problems and social successes much like their own. The first picture for each lesson in the Picture Book illustrates the story.

After you read the story, use the Questions for Discussion section to talk about the skills in the story. Then, guide additional discussion with the last three lesson pictures in the Picture Book.

Help your students practice the skills with selected learning activities from the Social Skills Activities in the Instructor's Manual. Choose activities that will reinforce the individual needs of your students.

Use the Role-Play Activities in the Instructor's Manual to help your students practice the social skill. You may choose to take one of the role-play parts so students will learn from your model. The first role play is usually based on the Social Skills Story. Additional role plays give other practice situations.

Give positive reinforcement that will encourage your students' good feelings about what they learn through the role play by using the questions in the Role-Play Feedback section. Also, use the questions to teach your students to give their classmates helpful feedback that will help them look forward to more role-play fun.

Add the Activities Book

Use the activity sheets as springboards for discussion and further practice. You might want your students to make their own social skills folder where they can place their completed activity sheets, as well as other social skills works.

Use the last activity sheet in each lesson to help your students decide on times and places to practice the skills they've learned. Refer back to the Instructor's Manual for examples of what your students might say.

Review the skills by using the Unit Game Sheets. The last activity sheet within each unit in the Activities Book is the Unit Game Sheet. You will need a marker for each player and a coin to play the games. Use the questions from the Picture Book as game questions. You may also want to guide a unit review with the Unit Game Sheets and questions from several lessons.

Use the Instructor's Manual again

Wrap up your students' study by reading aloud the Visualization section. This way, you end your study by guiding your students, skill by skill, through a review of what they've learned.

Combine the Room 14 lessons with your professional expertise and the lively participation of your students. The result will be hours of effective, language-learning experiences for your students!